 Good morning. Thank you all for being here. Yes, I would present some brief insights about what public spaces are within major settlements and with some case studies from both in Iberia. So if we look at, if we're moving specifically into public spaces, we like to look at what is often called as empty spaces within settlements. And these empty spaces that are known in settlements serve a variety of economic and social purposes. So often when we look at excavation plants and the areas where there are no structures, we tend to think, well, nothing here, but actually these areas were very, very important, socially speaking. They played a fundamental role in the acquisition of control over people and resources. And in fact, these open spaces constitute a very widespread phenomenon caused in the ancient and the modern world. So in some cases, when we have settlements with large, empty areas, people have tended to interpret them as a reflection of unfinished projects. So large open spaces that were supposed at some point to be built with structures, but they never finished that. But I think, okay, this might be the case for certain sites, but in many other cases, they were just an intrinsic part of the settlements in terms of social functions that they fulfilled. In my presentation, I will focus on the late Iron Age opida on the continent. So large 45 settlements from the second and first centuries BC. The opida are large settlements of thousands, sometimes even hundreds of hectares. And in some of them, we have significant internal occupation with neighborhoods, marketplaces, very intense craft production, evidence for long distance exchange. So many of these opida can be considered towns or cities. Not all, I have to say. There are also some opida that are virtually empty inside the fortified space. So, but even in those opida that present a significant internal occupation, they are still large open areas, so-called empty spaces. When we look at the fortified spaces, well, the walls were often determined by the topography. And this might also explain sometimes why we have sites that are really huge, but then with a rather restricted internal occupation. But in addition to this, these empty spaces, as I said, served a variety, could serve a variety of purposes. We have areas for agriculture or for keeping animals inside the fortified spaces. Also, these spaces could serve as basis of refuge for the population for a wider environment in case of danger. And also they could serve at least some of them as areas for assemblies, seasonal markets, and religious celebrations. And in fact, we know that the opida, or at least many opida, serve as important political and religious centers. And in my opinion, and I have argued this in a number of papers, in many cases this political and religious functions were even more important than the economic ones. So traditionally, research has focused a lot of this idea of opida as proto-industrial towns, but I think at least primary political symbolic significance was more important. From written sources, we note that many opida actually are central places for different political entities, and that this late Iron Age society had a variety of political institutions, large public assemblies, and then also more restricted councils that there were voting happening. So in this sense, we can see the opida as the centers for this, and the discovery of sanctuaries underlines also these rules. But for a long time, the question of public spaces inside the opida has been a very difficult one. We knew about a craft production, we knew about houses, but it was very difficult, has been very difficult to identify actually, what we can define as public spaces. And in fact, in 1993, Greg Paul published a very famous article, we think in the opida, which is full of very great ideas. But in that paper, he argued that the absence of recognizable public spaces in the opida was an indication of their rather non-urban character. So that was in 1993, but since then, many things have happened, and archaeologists all across Europe have identified numerous public spaces within the fortified space of several opida, and some of the most important examples are Titelberg, Madberg, Manchin, Corot, or San Silvan, I will refer to some of this here. It's a pity that Professor Matipu, who was planned to have the final paper, is not here today because actually the opidum of Corot, which is shown here in the image, which he has been excavating for a long time, provides one of the best examples of these public spaces. So just to name here a few examples of recent public spaces that have been published, Corot in France by Matipu, Titelberg in Luxembourg by the team around General Metzler, and I will refer to this site very briefly, and I have been dealing with this also in a number of papers, for example, one in the offer journal of archaeology, and a paper with Nico Roymans, where we try to exemplify several case studies, the role of public spaces. In the case of Corot in France, excavated by Matipu, we have here in this area a large public square that could be used for large meetings, gatherings, maybe this public assembly that we know from British sources. Next to it is an important sanctuary for evidences of feasting, riches, and so on. We also have a building, which you can see the kind of reconstruction here in the previous image, that Matipu has identified as the meeting place of the council, the synod of the al-Bernie, and we also have a marketplace around. So basically we have here an intervention of public, so political meetings, assemblies, the sanctuary, and the market area, and this is a model that actually we can find also in many other time periods, for example medieval Europe, where we have the casserole marketplace, council house. So in the case of Corot, it has been documented very well through the excavations, and there are a number of many other elements, for example, some archaeological orientations, the sanctuaries in relation to landscape features, and so on. The gatherings that were held at these public spaces in the opida will have been key elements in creating social cohesion, self-awareness, and shared identity. So these public spaces were fundamental arenas for social interaction and collective negotiation, as in comparable to what is known as plazas in different parts of the world, for example, Miss America, and there's a lot of literature on that. From Britain sources, we have references to the existence of public assemblies and councils among a later in ancient early medieval societies in different parts of temperate Europe, and it's important to emphasize, as we already mentioned here, that these meetings would be held sometimes within large settlements in closed spaces, but sometimes also just in natural features in the landscape, as is the case, for example, of the Altyn in Iceland or many other assembly spaces in Scandinavia. But these public assemblies were really crucial for the function of communities where people came together to negotiate collective affairs for laws, a very important judicial function, election of leaders, a regulation of control over resources, also communal defense, and usually they were always also linked, very closely linked to religion in the sense that, in many cases, we can even not distinguish really between this two kinds of political and religions, so that it also means that these large communal meetings were mostly held at or next to communal sanctuaries. And in this case, I fully agree with Ian Arnott's presentation, the role that some have decided to show in the brain and also some other smaller ones, and it's important to emphasize that these political institutions exist in societies that are highly hierarchical, but also in others that present much flatter social hierarchies. And I will argue that many of these public spaces, well, I'm not the only one, but I have tried to develop this in last year, that these public spaces were many cases used for these large communal assemblies. The opium of Tittleback in Luxembourg, I think, is a prime example, and it has been a way where researched archaeologically by Janu Metzler over a long period of time. Here we have a large area of 10 hectares that was separated from the rest of the opium. The opium is about 40 hectares large, and 10 hectares were separated from the rest by a ditch, as you can see here, and a Madrid wall. So it was clearly an intention to separate the profane and the communal sacred area that was used, apparently, just for political and religious purposes, but not for daily life, living houses. And the ditch itself contained abandoned remains such as animal bones, fibula, miniature weapons, coins, fragments of human skulls, and so to testify that this was not only physical, but more importantly, a symbolic boundary. Inside this, here you can see the opium of Tittleback and the separation of the public space about 10 hectares. And it is a huge public space, one of the largest that we know in temperate Europe. And Janu Metzler has identified a number of installations that he interprets as voting installations of the first half of the first century BC, so before the Roman compass, providing evidence for political decision taking. And then another feature of this public space is a huge amount of animal bones, more than 150,000 that have been documented. And the detailed study of them suggests that this is testifying the existence of large-scale communal feasting. And on the highest point of the site, there was a monumental building. And this site has a long history, as many of these places. And then, obviously, we have the Roman compass, process of integration in the Roman world. And in the first centuries AD, in this area, an important Roman temple developed. So even when the opium was later decayed in later times and lost its primary political function and economic function that was transferred to Tria in Roman times, it still remained a very important religious location until late antiquity. So Tittleback is located in the territory of the Trevery in eastern gold. Although its public space is the most prominent one and the largest one, we also have evidences for specific religious practices and assemblies in six of the seven Trevery and Opida. And the only one for which we don't have it is the one like this, where there has been very little research. So it might have existed as well. If we look at the distribution of this opida in the landscape, we see using the rather old-fashioned decent polygons, which are sometimes still less somehow useful. We see that they're distributed in a rather regular way in the landscape and although decent polygons obviously don't define territories not at all, but it still shows in a way that this role of the opida has the central places for wider areas. And as we noted as well that in five of the six public spaces known in the area of the Trevery are located on the highest point of the opida, which I think is important also for a symbolic point of view, this idea of the highest point. From written sources we know that Julius Caesar describes a large public assembly among the Trevery. Some also have suggested that this might have taken place in the public space of Titelberg. This is something that obviously we probably will never be able to prove, but nevertheless it's a further testimony of the existence of these large communal gatherings. And this is just a recreation of this gathering described by Caesar that was published in a magazine on opida earlier, well at the end of last year. Going a step further, we have several examples of sites where it seems that the use of a place for political and religious gatherings preceded the development of the agglomerations. And we see this for example in Manishing in Southern Germany, Grune, Mulle, and so other sites in Gold, also in Southern Gold, in the Mediterranean area, for example, in Tremor, Glanum, or in the very Peninsular sites such as San Siro and the Las. It's obviously often very difficult to prove, so I will expect that there are many more examples than those that are named here, but these are examples where we can actually say it, where we have archaeological evidence that there was the use of a space for religious political purposes, and then later the development of an important settlement on them. And a similar situation can also be observed in other regions and time periods, for example, in Scandinavia, there are several towns that they develop on the locations, the next two locations, or in assembly places, or think places. In the case of Manishing, for example, one of the best research, Oppida, there was a temple in the center of the sites that dates back to the end of the 4th century BC, and next to it there was also a space that also seems to exist since the very beginning of the site that probably was used as a meeting place and also several votive deposits around it. There are even some indications that the importance of the area of the temple might go back to the early Iron Age, and there are even evidences for links with earlier funerary monuments, so ancestral landscapes, and how this shapes the sites. Actually, it's very interesting that in many cases these public spaces integrate some earlier monuments like Bronze Age, Tunguli, so or this direct relationship to them, so it might be that people were constructing narratives about what earlier past. My last case study I want to mention is San Sivan de Galicia in Northwestern Iberia, a very interesting site, and I have been working on the publication of the excavations here with several Spanish colleagues in the last couple of years. This is one of the latches of Pida in Northwest Iberia, and on the top of the site you see here an enclosed space. This is the so-called Acropolis of Croa, Croa is a collision term, and through the excavations and a large set of radiocarbon dates it has been proved that the significance of the site can be traced back several centuries before the development of the opidum and even continued after the decline of the opidum. So what we seem to have is a gravity of a place in the long term, and the existence of a large agglomeration of an opidum is only one state within a much larger sediment history, sediment biography as Ian was also saying for the brain with different stages. So as I said the site is dominated by this world area of the Acropolis located on the highest point of the opidum, and this Acropolis covers approximately one hectare, which is equivalent in size to many of the hillforts of Northwest Iberia. The Acropolis remains free from living structures in the Iron Age, and actually for the Iron Age itself, basically what we have is an enclosed space with some radiocarbon dates indicating that people were going there at certain points, but we don't have much more evidence, such as to say that for example animal bones are not preserved here due to the acidity of the soil, so we will be lacking the evidences of feasting, for example, that we found in case they existed, which we don't know, but in any case it's a very special area, and then we also have some stone sculptures that are probably representing deities, and then in Roman times what we find is several inscriptions with the names of different deities coming from the area of the Acropolis, and there's also other features such as the orientation of one of the main gates, so what the sunsets, but the sun has all the stars and so on. So we have a space here, a delimited and enclosed space in a very prominent landmark location with a religious and probably also political function, so a public space for communal gatherings, warships, and assemblies, and although San Siber and the last is the best explored, the most impressive case study of these public spaces on the highest point of Anopidum in West Iberia, there are many other sites where in a smaller scale we have exactly the same phenomenon as we presented this recently at a conference in Leiden and we're preparing a paper on this, so this is not exceptional, it's just the most prominent one, but there are many other similar sites. So to conclude, one of the main purposes of public spaces, at least public spaces of the type and the scale I have been presenting here will have been to serve as a setting for communal gatherings, and probably also the commemoration of foundation men's stories about the communities that created the sense of collective identity. In a world where most of the people live dispersed in the countryside in small hamlets or dispersed famsters, these public spaces will have been the key arenas where people came together, negotiated collective affairs, created collective identity, probably in many cases also undertook economic transactions using the opportunity of people coming together. To quote Dersen Roymans, this site will be the concrete anchoring point in the landscape where the politics core values as exemplified in its tradition of origin were transmitted to the wider community through recitals, dramatic performances, and collective rituals. So in a way we can say that this is probably the place where the creation of traditional good place. Thank you for your attention.